Friday, September 4, 2009

Greetings from Erie or a Non-Rev's Prayer

Greetings friends,

Holden is taking a nap in Cicely's basement, and the house is pretty quiet excepting the white-noise from the de-humidifier (weird concept for a Utah girl) and the tumbling of clothes in the dryer -- so I thought I'd drop you all a line.

Before I get to far into this, I want to make note of some things I need to tell you about that will not make it in this post:

Chinese food in Erie

Room of Requirement and the Airport

Something else I can't remember

Wed morning, I was up at four (not on purpose) and Holden decided to join me. So that's how our travel day started.

We were fortunate to make the SLC-DTW (Detroit) flight (yes, airline employee and using those travel 'bennies')... even my mom got on! The agent found seats together for Mr. Holden and me; and then some stunning Indian girl (maybe 24?) who looked like a cross between Divya from 'Royal Pains' and that chick on ER that was the main character in Bend It Like Beckham... she gave up her aisle seat to my mom to sit in a middle seat just so our party could all be together.

Talk about karma - the guy sitting next to her ends up moving to sit across the isle in a middle seat by his wife, so she gets two seats to herself... good goes around, eh?

We really thought the travel gods were on our side.

Not so fast...

I could go on and on about our travel woes, and the bright spots (Agent Hunter from Mesaba decided she would be our own personal travel agent -- what a delight!) and got us listed for a Cleveland flight after we took last-place in the standby contest for two Erie flights (we really have no business traveling on a Holiday weekend - but the flights looked decent.)

Long story short? I approach the counter to ask if I should get a tag for my stroller -- eventhough we're on stand-by to save time in the long run -- she asks who is in our party... looks at the list and says 'I don't think you're going to make it."

Danny pulls up the flights - shows that there's still an open seat...

She never asks if we want to split our party.

Plane goes out with one seat open (which would've been perfect for my mom) and her supervisor is watching the whole thing go down and says nothing. . .Except, "I'll let her deal with you, I mean 'handle' you."

So needless to say - by 6 pm at night with a 7 month old who had been up since 4 with limited naps excepting his car seat and about 20 minutes in the 'pack' I was passed patience.We went to the Marriott to regroup for the night.

The next morning I had to deal with the TSA (pretty sure anyone who's ever traveled with me knows I have a loathe-hate relationship with the TSA -- except my cousin who works for them and the nice folks at St. George.) As a BODY, a collective, I really can't handle them...

Anyway, I have to deal with Bertha Big Enforcer who is CONVINCED I can't take dry-ice on the plane (for my frozen breast milk) even though I've checked with the airline and printed the document from online...

Her reasoning? Well, you couldn't a year ago...

Which makes sense because anyone who has traveled in the past year KNOWS that ALL travel regulations and security directives have been the EXACT same in the last year... I mean, there have not been ANY changes in policy for carrying of liquids or gels or where you put your shoes (I can think of a place or two I'd like to put them, but I kept it to myself...)

So of course she looks up the directive with her Sup, and of course I'm right... and grasping at air she said that 9 out of 10 times the airlines are wrong... and I had to set her straight of course... and so I rattled off something about every airport being different and it's been that way since Tom Ridge was first put in charge of the joke that Bush's Homeland Security is, etc. (But I'm sure I was much nicer about it.)

So my mood was not the best. And it was obvious what I needed to pray for:

God to take away the incompetence around me...

I mean, I thought about asking for patience and not being so quick to judge and trying to understand where other people were coming from; but it seemed WAY easier to just take away the stupidity around me.******